When Travelers' Paths Diverge

PASSPORT

Traveling with friends or family often makes the most memorable vacations, but not always in a good way.

And while it's true that nightmare vacation stories make great cocktail-party chatter, that's a high price to pay to be amusing over martinis.

``No matter how close relatives may be at home, the fact that they're related does not necessarily make them compatible travelers,'' writes Nadine Nardi Davidson in her book ``Travel With Others Without Wishing They'd Stayed Home.'' And the same goes for friends and lovers, she says.

With the travel-together season upon us, Davidson has some useful advice.

First, determine the type of traveler you are and try to assess those who you intend to travel with before choosing a destination. Davidson categorizes travelers as: enthusiasts, adventurers, sportsmen, relaxers, beach bums, comfort seekers, culturists, shoppers and discoverers.

Mixing and matching vacation types is a gamble that grows riskier with as pairings become more diverse. For example, a relaxer and a beach bum might do fine, but a relaxer and a culturist is a potentially explosive situation.

The relaxer's ideal is ``a resort where they don't have to lift a finger, and preferably, not even their heads,'' Davidson writes. But a culturist wants to ``get a feel for [local] life'' by shopping local markets, meeting new people, visiting museums and attending music festivals and folk dances.

If you can't tell what type you are by the titles, Davidson's book ($16.95, Prince Publishing) has a quick quiz in the first chapter.

A little self-knowledge can go a long way to making sure you have the vacation you want.

``I've been in travel for 27 years, so I don't just hear about the good times,'' Davidson said. ``I hear, `It would have been great except, my friend -- well, we're not friends anymore -- turned out to be ... '''

Besides friends who you think you know, other red flags include new couples, anyone who you haven't vacationed with before and companions in different tax brackets or with different spending attitudes.

Of course, most potential problems can be solved by pre-thinking and discussing each person's expectations.

Time

Many people expect that if they are taking a trip with another person, couple or group, they will be spending much of the time together. But not everyone shares that view, and if travelers don't discuss that before the trip, there can be misunderstandings and anger.

``Talk it out before you have to tough it out'' on a trip, Davidson said last week from her office at the Travel Store Inc. in Los Angeles.

Years ago, Davidson was dismayed when she had to coax her husband to the Louvre, which he called ``just a museum,'' and she got angry when he said `OK, we've seen it [the Mona Lisa]. Let's go.'

``That got me rethinking what I always had believed myself, which is that when you travel with someone you have to do everything together,'' Davidson said. Now she counsels compromise. ``There's no sense in trying to force someone to like something that you like.''

Money

How much and how to spend it -- the same amount can buy a month backpacking, a weeklong trip in budget hotels or a shorter vacation in luxury accommodations -- are big questions in nearly every vacation plan. But money also can play another role.

Davidson, a leisure-travel specialist, said she has seen many misunderstandings in young couples, mostly about money and the nature of the relationship.

``They are not clear, up front, about who pays for what,'' Davidson said, noting that a young woman might assume that any guy who buys her airline ticket also will be paying for the hotel and activities, while the guy might think otherwise. ``And they also are not up front about their romantic expectations.''

A guy who takes a woman on vacation might be expecting their relationship to ``move to another level,'' Davidson said, while the woman might see it as nothing more than traveling with a friend.

Comfort

Davidson tells the story of a husband who planned a train trip across Europe with stays in economy hotels and inns. His wife said she'd rather stay home than give up her king-size bed and Jacuzzi bathtub. So she did, and he went without her. When he returned, they took a shorter vacation at a deluxe resort near their home.

Most couples would rather compromise on their comfort issues than vacation alone, but Davidson warns: ``Once you agree to compromise don't complain about it. ... There's nothing that ruins a trip faster than whining.''

Style

``People can have personalities as different as Popeye and Captain Bligh and yet be friends. ... But some personality traits we find attractive or tolerable in the short term may become more pronounced and frustrating when friends are together for longer periods,'' Davidson wrote in her book.

Recently, she told of a couple who vacationed for the first -- and the last -- time with another couple whom they thought they knew. The man in the second couple was an attorney, who had an annoying habit.

``Every time they checked into a hotel, he would try to renegotiate the rate. All they wanted to do was check in and get settled into their room. But he'd be negotiating,'' Davidson said. The couple confessed that when they thought back over dinner dates before the vacation, they remember that the man had always found something to negotiate about at dinner -- a better table, better service, a different wine.